Hmmmm, I'd heard that there were problems on the early sailings, but I hadn't heard quite this much. The comments about the Promenade Lounge, in particular, are disturbing.
My Magic cruise isn't until next January, so hopefully these wrinkles will get ironed out by then.
I don't want to discourage anyone, I had a great time on our Cruise and at the end of the day I was on a Disney Brand ship, with one of the world's leading cruise lines in January in the Bahamas, it was 70 and overcast, but back home in Detroit it was -30 and in the middle of one of the largest snow storms in 20+ years. I had a lot to be thankful for.
I was very excited to try the new ship, then once the excitement wore off I started to notice things more and more ... I honestly didn't go looking for them, but during our sailing the weather was pretty bad and as a result I spent a lot more time inside the ship than the average person typically would. My wife still has pretty bad morning sickness so she spent a lot of time resting in the room, and I filled my time walking around with my camera taking pictures, checking out the details and checking out every inch of the ship, so they were much more apparent to me than the average guest. (Also being an Art Director for 10+ years and now a producer ... it's just in my DNA to really notice and focus on details, and like I tell my clients, 'The details are not the details, they make the design.' ((Charles Eames)).)
The projector in the Buena Vista theater either needs a new bulb or the lens cleaned because center screen was pretty soft and streaky. The scrambled eggs at breakfast seem like they are powdered now, the guest laundry was pretty bad on Deck 6 ... bare floor and shredded drywall, I noticed numerous lights out, rotted deck wood, missing trim, especially on a couple of the seats at the Walt Disney Theater (the side panels were missing completely), missing light switch covers in our stateroom, lots of areas that needed paint and in some cases fixtures hanging out of their sockets, the most notable a recessed can half out of its hole above the desk at guest services. I was more shocked that this ship had just come off dry dock and looked the way it did. The craftsmanship was well below what I had experienced on the Dream.
January 2015? I am confident they should be able to get it right by then ... I saw a lot of work being done all over the ship, some major repairs and some minor ... a couple of the maintenance employees commented off record that they felt it was pushed back into service too quickly and now they were having to work double to fix what didn't get done while in dry dock, and as a result it's far more complicated trying to do that with a ship full of people.
The bathroom was a huge problem for us as my wife is pregnant and currently extremely sensitive to smells, I was promised I would be contacted by Disney to address the issue after the sailing so hopefully that happens in the next week, if not, I will contact them myself.
The ship and its crew are still lightyears ahead of the other cruise lines, especially Carnival, and the the staff is outstanding and you honestly can't fault them for what they are dealing with ... I would love for the suit who made the decision to shorten the re-fit to look me in the eye and tell me that he or she would have no problem putting their family on the ship and it's staterooms in their present condition ... I would bet anything this was done to minimize downtime and maximize profit, a line of thought that I hoped would not show itself in the Cruise Line for years to come.
